A charming and historic London chapel that’s been home to thousands of weddings — and has been visited by U.S. literary giant Walt Whitman — will shut its doors indefinitely.

In the shuffle of hospital services from the closing of the London Psychiatric Hospital, the 130-year-old non-denominational Chapel of Hope on the site will hold its last wedding Sept. 30.

Soon after that, the chapel and other historic buildings on the Highbury Ave. property will go under control of Infrastructure Ontario, the provincial crown corporation in charge of real estate.

“Thousands and thousands” of couples have been married at the chapel, said Dale Jardine, volunteer co-ordinator for Regional Health Care London.

Volunteers book the weddings at the chapel, which seats about 200.

“It’s a beautiful, old chapel. It has a lot of history. The grounds are so nice, people want to get their photographs taken outside,” Jardine said. “A lot of families would get married there, their kids would want to get married there. It’s been on site for such a long time, there’s a little bit of tradition to it.”

The Chapel of Hope was built, partly by patients, in 1884 in the Gothic Revival style that mimicked medieval architecture.

Superintendent Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, a friend and biographer of poet Whitman, oversaw the construction as part of his plan to create beautiful grounds and a sanctuary to improve the mental health of patients. (It was a radical idea at a time when other so-called asylums were little more than warehouses for people with mental illness.)

Whitman visited the chapel, said Jardine, the site’s defacto historian.

Today, the signature Southwestern Ontario yellow bricks of the church are ivy-covered on the outside, and exposed to wedding-goers inside, framed by original wooden beams and ceiling, and stained-glass trilliums in the window peaks.

The building has been designated a heritage structure, said city hall’s heritage planner, Don Menard. The city is preparing a plan for development of the 77-hectare site.

“It is well constructed, has been well maintained and is functional,” he said.

But it’s not clear when the chapel will be back in business, who will oversee that business or how.

“Until we have control of the facility and begin our due diligence process, we’re not really in a position to enter into any leases for any of the buildings on this site,” said Ian McConachie, a spokesperson for Infrastructure Ontario.

The corporation plans to take over the site on Highbury Ave., patients and staff from the site move to new quarters beside Parkwood Hospital on Wellington Rd.

“As a site of this size, we will have to evaluate the buildings and do an assessment on heritage status and look at the state of the buildings and such. It could take some time, like a few years.”

But there’s a chance some buildings could be cleared for use before others, McConachie added.